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Topic: Demaine, france? (Read 1183 times)

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.... to the original poster, research and prove your ancestry as that is the ONLY way you will know where they came from, who they were........... and have fun with word history as it 'means' NOTHING as far as ancestry research is concerned unless you can find records to prove migration

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Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.... to the original poster, research and prove your ancestry as that is the ONLY way you will know where they came from, who they were........... and have fun with word history as it 'means' NOTHING as far as ancestry research is concerned unless you can find records to prove migration

Steady on! I tend to agree with your point, but I would put it more calmly.

Surnames can be clues as to possible origins of a family, but without tracking back to prove the line they are not to be taken as evidence.

I have a TREWARTHA line. Have I proved they came from Cornwall? Yes - by BMDs and parish registers.I have a LARCHER line. Have I proved they came from France? Yes - by BMDs and PRs.I have an O'CONNELL line. Have I proved they came from Ireland? No - it's a clue, but I haven't proved it.I have a BASFORD line. Have I proved they came from Basford? No - I have proved them in Towcester, near Basford, but I haven't proved a Basford origin.....and so on.

Back to William DEMAINE in Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire. In your other thread http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=793369.9 you state that the baptism (1679 is annotated FNU - suggesting Father's Name Unknown. Was there a mother named in the baptism register? If not, unless there are notes elsewhere (such as parish minutes) you may have hit a dead end.

arthurk's findings show that the name DEMAINE existed in the 1570s in Yorkshire and 13th century Lancashire shows that there could be plenty of research still to be done in England on this line.

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Without wanting to reignite the argument, I think it is somewhat misleading to say that people chose their own surnames. No doubt the wealthy and those with substance did, but those at the bottom of the heap were given theirs. Quite commonly, someone who was a sawyer would be called John Sawyer; a barrel-maker would be Will Cooper and so on. Others would take the name of their lord, or the village where they lived. For these people, surnames were flexible too, and a lot depended on what the parish clerk wrote in his register as to what your name was.

This method of naming still exists in parts of rural Wales, where there are often only two dominant surnames. So people are familiarly called by their farm or house names or by a defining feature, as was the practise in England in earlier times. For example our house was Bear House, so we were known as The Bears; one of the village lads who was a bit of a tearaway was known as Dai Bungalow because 'he had nothing upstairs', and the unfortunate woman who lived next to a public toilet was known as Megan Toilet Cottage.

It is quite possible for instances of what appears to be the same surname to have completely different origins, and just because some Demaines may be able to claim a Norman-French origin, it doesn't necessarily mean that all will.

I'm also a little unsure about how reliable that site is: they appear to have gathered a few random early occurrences from parish registers and other documents, but there is little or nothing about significant localised clusters of some names in later centuries. There also seems to be no reference to the work of acknowledged experts in the field of surname research. What does anyone else think?

I think we're at risk of straying into pantomime land: "Oh yes it is!" - "Oh no it isn't!" Maybe, after all the information and ideas we have shared, it's time to conclude that:

The name Demaine occurs in France.Some Demaines in the UK may have lines going back to France (at whatever date)Some Demaine surnames in the UK might have been adapted or adopted in the past.As yet, the link between William Demaine and France may be correct, but has not yet been proved by official records.

I have a Demaine family in my tree. I have an Anthony Demaine b 1705 d 1784 Menwith Hill Yorkshire. My Line goes down to my Great Grandfather Arthur Demaine Laurie, Demaine being his mother's maiden name.Maybe we link in somewhere?

I wonder if this might be the same name, though it's not in Yorkshire: Demene.

This is a case in Common Pleas from 1440:

Wilts. Robert Hungerford, knight, versus Peter Demene, of South Langley (Langley Burrell), for waste (lowering the value of property through destruction or neglect) of property held on a life tenure in Hardenhuish. (Both places near Chippenham.)

Hi carol, Looking through my tree I don't have an anthony demaine born 1705. The only anthony I have was born 1700 in Pateley bridge, Yorkshire. I've noticed there were other demaine families living in Yorkshire. Could be a connection somewhere down the line, I don't know.

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